The co-creative exhibition project EVROVIZION crossing stories and spaces explores the current and social and political climate in Europe and the idea of a European identity. The focus is on less visible and marginalised geopolitical and cultural spaces, in particular in southeast and eastern Europe. These are so-called semi-peripheries and places of diversity that often play only a minor role in many international theoretical discourses and exhibition practices, such as the multi-ethnic city of Sarajevo – the first venue of the project.
In close cooperation with regional protagonists and each local art scene, new artistic projects will be added to the exhibition during the course of its tour. The aim is to reflect on contemporary social and political challenges, and to make specific local impulses visible in order to generate the continuous and flowing development of dialogue spaces.
The exhibition title EVROVIZION is a construct made of similar and yet still different languages – Eurovisione / Evrovizija/ Евровизия – a fusion of potential unities; a free version of potential togetherness.
Artists
Nevin Aladağ, Igor Bošnjak, Vajiko Chachkhiani, Lana Čmajčanin, Johanna Diehl, Petrit Halilaj, Janine Jembere, Henrike Naumann, Emilija Škarnulytė, Selma Selman, Slavs and Tatars, Adnan Softić
Curatorial Team
Sanja Kojić Mladenov/RS, Sabina Klemm/DE and local curators
Team ifa
Martin Edelmann, Clea Laade, Sabina Klemm, Manuel Reinhartz, Carsten Tabel, Laura Wünsche
is an art historian and has curated numerous exhibitions and projects in Serbia and abroad. She conducts research in the field of recent artistic practice, new media and gender. From 2013–2016 she was the director and since 2016 has been senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina, Novi Sad/RS. She curated the Serbian Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale.
explores the limits of objects and forms by working with traditional materials and techniques. Questions about origin and identity play an important role in her sculptural interventions, performances, video and sound installations.
analyses socio-political realities in the Balkans – relations between historical facts and their distorted preservation in technology, personal memory, and collective belief. He works in film, video installation and photography.
creates intersections between the outer world and the mind in subtle visual poetry. His films, sculptures, performances, photographs and large installations link human emotions with themes from politics, religion and literature.
addresses geopolitical mapping, political contexts, and the female body. In her multi-media installations, objects and video works she also explores structural violence, the politics of memory, practices of nationalist politics, and the neoliberal management of trauma.
explores the obscure recesses of collective cultural memory. She is interested in forms of the 'overwriting of memory' and the 'presence of absence'. In her photo series and films she negotiates the identity of contemporary Europe.
Petrit Halilaj's work is deeply connected with the history of his own country, Kosovo, and the political and cultural tensions in the region. While confronting collective memory, his installations often originate from intimate processes and personal experience.
Janine Jembere's practice spans video, sound, installation and performance. Her research and work are often collaborative, revolving around sensuality and the body, and questioning concepts of translatability, ableism, race and gender.
Henrike Naumann's installations reflect socio-political issues on the level of interior design and domestic spaces. She is interested in mechanisms of radicalisation – growing up in East Germany, she than experienced extreme right ideologies in youth culture in the 1990s.
Selma Selman's work is based on her own experience as a Bosnian woman of Roma origin. In her drawings, paintings, performances and multimedia installations, she aims to protect female bodies and encourage collective self-emancipation of oppressed women.
makes films and immersive video installations exploring deep time and invisible structures, from the cosmic and geological to the ecological and political, working between the documentary and the imaginary.
is an art collective devoted to an area east of the former Berlin Wall and west of the Great Wall of China known as Eurasia. Based on thorough research, their exhibitions, publications and lecture-performances explore language, ritual and identity.
Adnan Softić's interdisciplinary work addresses historical and political remembrance, examining the relationships between architecture and violence, narration and exile. He describes his artistic approach as 'post-traumatic entertainment.'
belongs to the first generation of pioneering Bosnian women filmmakers. Her poetic cinematic works tell subtle personal stories, mainly by women and children. They speak of the situation of refugees, and of the aftermath of war and trauma.
is a musicologist and curator from Sarajevo. In the past twenty years, she has produced numerous contemporary art projects in Bosnia and Herzegovina and internationally. She is an assistant professor at the Academy of Music and the Academy of Performing Arts at Sarajevo University.
Essay about Cultural Institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina from Amila Ramović in the ifa blog
Irmgard Maria Fellner has been the Director for Cultural Relations Policy and Deputy Head of the Directorate-General for Culture and Communication at the Federal Foreign Office since 2018. She studied humanities and political science, and worked for the European Affairs Committee of the French National Assembly before joining the German Foreign Service in 1993, with postings including London and São Paulo. Following a period in Washington, D.C. (1999–2002) she headed the office of Karsten D. Voigt, Coordinator of German-American Cooperation from 2003 to 2007. In 2010 she joined the office of French Foreign Minister Kouchner. Thereafter she worked in various capacities in the German Foreign Office, including on multilateral issues relating to Afghanistan, and she was Deputy Head of the German Embassy in Italy to 2018.
is a carpenter and architect. He has been working as an ifa representative since 2005, having travelled to five continents so far. For the ifa touring exhibitions, he builds architectural models, develops crate systems for the travelling artworks and is in charge of mounting and dismantling the exhibitions.
is sure that the ifa exhibition project 'EVROVIZION crossing stories and spaces' will initiate a dialogue leading to in-depth exchange on Europe today and in future. Manuel Reinartz is an artist and art educator working in the field of photography and literature. He has been working as an ifa representative for the touring exhibitions since 2015.
is excited to experience the development of the exhibition throughout the years and to see his own perspectives on Europe changing. Carsten Tabel is an artist and art educator, working in the field of film, performance and literature. He has been working as an ifa representative with ifa's touring exhibitions since 2015.
is an art historian and curator. She was co-curator of the project 'GOOD SPACE – POLITICAL, AESTHETIC AND URBAN SPACES' (2016) and curator of the exhibition 'Stories in Your Mind' (2017) at Villa Merkel in Esslingen. Since 2018 she has devised and planned several projects within the arts department at ifa, among others ifa's participation in the London Design Biennale 2018 and two venues of the exhibition 'The Whole World a Bauhaus'. She has been the project manager of the exhibition 'The Event of a Thread: Global Narratives in Textiles' since 2019.
With over 20 touring exhibitions currently travelling across the globe and with its diverse event programmes on contemporary art, the ifa links the German art scene with internationally active cultural creators and forms cooperations and networks. The projects, many of which were developed in co-creation with local partners, cover the various disciplines of modern and contemporary fine arts – from current themes in architecture, photography and design to Bauhaus and monographic exhibitions such as Rosemarie Trockel or Wolfgang Tillmans. These projects generate local meeting platforms and allow international perspectives on topics of global relevance. The ifa also provides loan exhibits to interested museums.
